Next week I’m heading down to L.A. for the annual InformationWeek500 conference. Sony Pictures, H.B. Fuller, and Flextronics will return this year to participate on a Workday customer panel, and Valspar will make its debut on the panel. Last year’s panel was a success, with IW500 attendees packing the room to ask our customers about their decisions to go with SaaS for their core HR systems.

The tough economy has hit IT budgets hard, but there’s one area where many companies continue to invest, and it might surprise people. According to a new Towers Watson survey, 83% of respondents said they are maintaining or increasing spending on HR software in 2010.

Today we present a sponsored podcast discussion on how software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications can accelerate the use and power of business analytics. We're going to use the example of a human capital management (HCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) SaaS provider to show how easily customizable views on data and analytics can have a big impact on how managers and knowledge workers operate.

It has to be one of the biggest software industry no-brainers of all time -- the idea to converge human resources management and talent management software.

It seems counterintuitive that HR systems haven’t always included t he ability to track and record such things as employee skills and goals -- along with hours worked and absences -- since the quality of a workforce is so important to any company’s success.